John Boland - Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 54, No. 3, March 2009

“Let it go,” Mike said. “Porky’s career won’t survive this.”

“But do you believe it was Gina Spalitro who killed my father?”

He gave it the same helpless shrug that was wandering around inside of me.

“She could have.”

“There’s the gun,” I said.

“You didn’t see a gun.”

“But what else could she have been reaching for? Don’t we have evidence enough for a warrant to take a look?”

“Let’s find out,” he said.

We obtained a warrant and the police found the gun under the counter at Altieri’s Market. It was registered to Gina’s father. She had apparently used it, then put it back under the counter eight years ago. Because at the time there was no reason to think she had motive to kill a cop, she thought she would never be a suspect or that her father’s gun would ever be connected to the shooting. Instead of throwing the gun into the ocean, she cleaned and oiled it then returned it back behind the counter.

The forensic examination concluded that the slugs found in the sand and in Frank Kerrigan’s body had come from that gun. At the hearing it was determined that Gina had mistaken my father for Porky Johnson and had shot him in a psychotic jealous rage.

Porky Johnson was fired.

Copyright © 2008 Jim Ingraham

Holzer and Coughlin were on the way to finish what Danneman had begun.

“It pisses me off, that’s all,” Coughlin said.

Holzer stayed quiet. His partner’s default position was pissed off. The angry young man, Holzer called him. Danneman, a twenty-year patrolman, responded when the woman called 9-1-1 at daybreak to report her husband didn’t come home last night. Rather than follow up on a few details, Danneman quickly dumped the case on the detectives and went back to patrolling. No big deal.

“Danneman’s such a lazy bastard.” Coughlin’s freckled hands gripped the steering wheel as if he were navigating a road in Baghdad, not suburban Connecticut. “He doesn’t have enough ambition to scratch his own ass.”

Danneman was lazy, no argument there. But working a missing persons case, even if it turned out to be a husband who simply overslept in his girlfriend’s bed, beat sitting in the office. And no one hated deskwork on a sunny day more than Sean Coughlin, so why gripe about pulling this case? Mr. Glass Half Empty, that was Coughlin.

“And on top of being lazy, he’s cheap, know what I mean? He never paid me back for—”

“Turn here,” Holzer said.

Coughlin stomped on the brake and jerked the wheel. The Crown Vic careened around the corner onto Evergreen Lane. “You could have warned me it was coming up.”

Holzer could have answered that Coughlin knew the roads every bit as well as he did, having spent all thirty-four years of his life in Palmyrton, Connecticut. And Holzer could have mentioned that Coughlin would have accused him of backseat driving if he had pointed out the turn earlier. But Holzer kept quiet. That’s how he’d survived three years as Coughlin’s partner when no one else had made it three months.

Coughlin took the next turn sedately, and they pulled up in front of a trim colonial with a flagstone walk, the home of Brian and Michelle Fanning. Handmade Halloween decorations hung in the windows. A flag shaped like a witch on a broomstick fluttered in the breeze.

Coughlin scowled. “Guy better get his ass back home, he knows what’s good for him.”

In the midst of a messy divorce, Coughlin’s baseline irritability ratcheted up whenever he was reminded of children. He’d been talking excitedly about having kids with Patty, right up to the day she packed her bags and ran off to Boston. Personally, Holzer was relieved, although he didn’t let on. Having four sons himself, he knew a marriage needed to be rock solid to survive the arrival of a baby. Patty and Sean had been a soap opera from day one. No, Coughlin wasn’t ready for fatherhood. Not now, maybe never.

“If his ass is in one piece,” Holzer said as he rapped on the shiny red front door. Danneman had told them the Fannings were building a new house a few miles out, where cul-de-sacs butted up against horse pastures. When he went out there to look for Brian Fanning, Danneman found five big drops of blood soaked into the plywood floor of the prospective living room, prompting him to turn the disappearance over to the detectives. Now Holzer and Coughlin would start over with the wife, without letting her know what the patrolman had found. The blood might be nothing — a carpenter who cut himself on a protruding nail.

Or it could mean Brian Fanning was never coming home.

Behind the door came the sound of running, then a woman’s voice. “Wait, Natalie. I’ll answer it.”

The door opened on a beautiful little girl, maybe four years old, swathed in a long, glittery pink dress. Big green eyes stared up at Holzer from under a cloud of red-gold curls. Her skin looked too delicate to withstand the rigors of childhood as it was lived in the Holzer house — mountain biking, skateboarding, tackle football indoors and out. She wore a crown and carried a wand.

“Hey, you must be my fairy godmother,” Holzer said, crouching down to her level.

She squinted, clearly surprised that people as dim witted as him were allowed out unsupervised. “I’m Glinda, Good Witch of the North.” With great dignity, she pivoted and marched down the hall.

Now Michelle Fanning found her voice, and it was tinged with anxiety. “Are you policemen? You’re not the ones who were here earlier. What’s happened?”

They introduced themselves and followed Mrs. Fanning into the living room. Holzer and Coughlin exchanged a glance and a grin as they watched her move inside tight jeans. From behind, she looked like a slender but curvy teenager. When she sat down and faced them they could see by the faint worry lines etched in her fair skin that she was in her early thirties. But with the same red-gold hair and green eyes as her daughter, she was a beauty.

Holzer felt more uneasy now about the blood. Surely any man married to a woman like Michelle would have damn little reason to stray. But then, gorgeous women were often drawn to jerks. Look at Patty and Coughlin.

“Have you found my husband? Is he... hurt?”

“We haven’t found him, Mrs. Fanning,” Coughlin said. “We just need to, uh, clarify a few things.”

Michelle Fanning sat on the edge of her chair, eager to help. Holzer didn’t want to meet her pleading green gaze. He knew she thought if she answered all their questions accurately they’d be obligated, through some cosmic quid pro quo, to deliver her husband safe and sound. In his line of work it didn’t always happen that way. Nice people were often disappointed; jerks escaped the fate they deserved.

“When’s the last time you saw your husband, ma’am?” Holzer asked.

“Last night at dinner. Brian came home from work early so we could eat together as a family. At eight, after the kids were in bed, he went back into the office to finish up a few things.”

“Works late a lot?” Coughlin glanced around the living room, as if making cocktail conversation. Casual, chatty, full of Irish charm: No one could turn it on — and off — faster than Sean. Meanwhile, Holzer played the straight man, the one who wanted only the facts.

“He has customers in Japan. He has to work on their schedule.” Mrs. Fanning sat up stiffly, refusing to relax into the easy chair.

Coughlin smiled sympathetically, glancing at a framed photo that showed Natalie with a little boy a few years older. “Must be rough with two little ones. Do you usually wait up for him?”